The Prize Plays and Other One-Acts Published in Periodicals (African-American Women Writers, 1910-1940)

During the 1920s the annual literary contests sponsored by The Crisis and Opportunity magazines provided critical professional outlets for African-American women playwrights. The works presented here (both prize-winning plays and plays that received their first publication in such organs as The Saturday Evening Quill and Carolina Magazine) cover a wide range of dramatic genres - from propaganda plays and light comedies to melodramas, folk plays, and poetic drama.